A Kitchen Day

Our wacky summer weather continues into our fall.  After having a lovely few days of cooler, autumnal feeling weather, the last two days have been full of humidity and heat.  I know I shouldn't complain about our weather, though, considering what all the folks on the southeastern coast of our country are facing.  This is a time we hope the weather people are wrong about their predictions and the severity of the hurricane will not materialize.

I crossed another big one off my To Do List today.  Pulling, processing and getting the beets from the garden into the freezer was accomplished.

Slow learner that I am, I've finally realized we don't need a full 4' x 8' raised bed of beets for the two of us.  Plus, giving up making any pickled beets this year seems wise as I'm the only one who enjoys them.

This year I planted only two eight foot rows of beets and after the harvest was completed today I'm confident that is enough.

For the last several years I've planted only the Forono variety of beets as the long, cylindrical shape makes it easy to slice up into proper sized pieces.  This bowlful pictured above weighed fourteen pounds and I had another bowl of the same size.

I sorted the beets by size and cooked them in two pots, one for medium sized beets and one for the larger ones.

Made a bloody messy mess of the kitchen (if you've ever processed beets you know what I mean), and when all was said and done, I put thirty-three servings (a serving being a meal for two people) in the freezer.  I saved a bag of the raw beets to use for grated beet salads and roasted beets.  With all the other veggies stashed in the larder, we aren't going to be lacking for vegetables on our plates this winter.  The only one to do yet is the Brussels sprouts.

After I swabbed up from the beet processing, I took what I think will be our last cutting of mint for this year.

I like to have eight full trays (the capacity of our dehydrator) when I dry anything.  Wouldn't you know it, I had only seven trays full and I think there just may be enough left out in the mint bed for one more tray.  But when I got that far tonight, it was already dark and I didn't have the gumption left to put on my headlight and go cut more.  The trays already done will wait in the dryer over night, and I'll finish up that last tray first thing in the morning.

Switching topics, on the automotive front, we just had four new tires mounted and some work done on the brakes of our Suburban so tomorrow we're planning on taking it out for a test drive to see that all is A-OK now.  Our fall color season seems to be a bit slow in arriving this year, but we'll do some scouting on our drive to see if we can spot some color.  Who knows, maybe we'll stop somewhere for lunch . . . somewhere not in Mama Pea's kitchen.